Banks, insurance companies, and discrimination

This article examines some of the reasons why banks and insurance companies have been accused of discrimination, and shows that this is by and large a false accusation. Economic analysis demonstrates that racial discrimination is not a profit-maximizing strategy. Actually, unwise public policies are actually precluding many consumers from the market.redlining; financial regulation; unintended consequences

Optimized magneto-optical isolator designs inspired by seedlayer-free terbium iron garnets with opposite chirality

Simulations demonstrate that undoped yttrium iron garnet (YIG) seedlayers cause reduced Faraday rotation in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguides with Ce-doped YIG claddings. Undoped seedlayers are required for the crystallization of the magneto-optical Ce:YIG claddings, but they diminish the interaction of the Ce:YIG with the guided modes. Therefore new magneto-optical garnets, terbium iron garnet (TIG) and bismuth-doped TIG (Bi:TIG), are introduced that can be integrated directly on Si and quartz substrates without seedlayers. The Faraday rotations of TIG and Bi:TIG films at 1550nm were measured to be +500 and -500°/cm, respectively. Simulations show that these new garnets have the potential to significantly mitigate the negative impact of the seedlayers under Ce:YIG claddings. The successful growth of TIG and Bi:TIG on low-index fused quartz inspired novel garnet-core waveguide isolator designs, simulated using finite difference time domain (FDTD) methods. These designs use alternating segments of positive and negative Faraday rotation for push-pull quasi phase matching in order to overcome birefringence in waveguides with rectangular cross-sections

Merleau-Ponty and neuroaesthetics: Two approaches to performance and technology

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Digital Creativity, 23(3-4), 225 - 238, 2012. Copyright @ 2012 Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14626268.2012.709941.Assisted by the rapid growth of digital technology, which has enhanced its ambitions, performance is an increasingly popular area of artistic practice. This article seeks to contextualise this within two methodologically divergent yet complimentary intellectual tendencies. The first is the work of the philosopher Merleau-Ponty, who recognised that our experience of the world has an inescapably ‘embodied’ quality, not reducible to mental accounts, which can be vicariously extended through specific instrumentation. The second is the developing field of neuroaesthetics; that is, neurological research directed towards the analysis, in brain-functional terms, of our experiences of objects and events which are culturally deemed to be of artistic significance. I will argue that both these contexts offer promising approaches to interpreting developments in contemporary performance, which has achieved critical recognition without much antecedent theoretical support

Rejoinder to Ayres on defense, punishment and gentleness

Ayres maintains that both punishment after the fact of crime, and what the victim is allowed to do during the commission of the crime, should be based upon proportionality. I agree with him on the former contention, but not the latter. This paper is my attempt to make the case that the victim is entitled, based upon libertarian law, to do whatever is necessary to defend himself and his property, provided, only, that he employ the most gentle means compatible with this end. Ayres demurs

\u3ci\u3eImpact IPSA Loquitur\u3c/i\u3e: A Reverse Hand Rule for Consumer Finance

The topic of this symposium—Automating Bias—considers how artificial intelligence can produce, reinforce, and hide racial and other forms of discrimination in consumer finance. The animating intuition is that the complexity and opacity of algorithms and artificial intelligence in consumer lending create a greater need for disparate impact analysis to combat lending discrimination. This view was articulated forcefully by the current Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Rohit Chopra, when he was still a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

Fit for Its Ordinary Purpose: Implied Warranties and Common Law Duties for Consumer Finance Contracts

The history of consumer goods and consumer credit markets pre-sents an anomaly: market transactions for consumer goods and credit transactions evolved in tandem from face to face and bespoke to standardized and widely distributed; the law governing these “product” markets has not. With consumer goods, the Uniform Commercial Code codifies implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, and the common law of tort provides strict liability for defective products. With consumer fi-nance contracts, borrowers enjoy scant common law protection. And yet both consumer goods and consumer contracts may be danger-ously defective “products.”This Article reconsiders the traditional, all-or-nothing choice be-tween tort and contract law to govern injury from different sorts of consumer products. It argues for a symmetric treatment of defective consumer goods and consumer financial products, one accom-plished by turning to the tort-like doctrines in the common law of contract: the doctrines of unconscionability; good faith; and war-ranty. The terms of an adhesive financial contract should be inter-preted in light of an implied warranty that the contract-as-product is as described. The defense of unconscionability should be strengthened to enable enhanced scrutiny of terms that fundamen-tally undermine contractual products. Its procedural prong should be satisfied by the adhesive nature of the terms, without additional proof of the circumstances of a consumer’s surprise about the con-tents of the contract. The substantive prong should be informed by implied obligations of good faith and the implication that this con-tract-as-product is fit for ordinary and particular purposes – that it is faithful to the underlying transaction. Attempts by lenders to dis-claim implied warranties or obligations of good faith should be viewed as prima facie unconscionable.In this way, the law governing consumer-contracts-as-products would serve the same function as the product liability and warranty laws that govern consumer-goods-as-products. Reconciliation of these laws would ensure that financial contracts are fit for their or-dinary purposes as loans

Fit for Its Ordinary Purpose: Implied Warranties and Common Law Duties for Consumer Finance Contracts

The history of consumer goods and consumer credit markets presents an anomaly: market transactions for consumer goods and credit transactions evolved in tandem, from face-to-face and bespoke to standardized and widely distributed; the law governing these twin product markets has not. With consumer goods, the Uniform Commercial Code codifies implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose and the common law of tort provides strict liability for defective products. By contrast, with consumer finance contracts, borrowers enjoy scant common law protection, even though both consumer goods and consumer contracts maybe be dangerously defective products. This Article reconsiders the traditional, all-or-nothing choice between tort and contract law to govern injury from different sorts of consumer products. It argues for a symmetric treatment of defective consumer goods and consumer financial products, by enlisting the tort-like doctrines in the common law of contract: the doctrines of unconscionability; good faith; and warranty. The terms of an adhesive financial contract can and should be interpreted in light of an implied warranty that the contract-as-product is as described. The defense of unconscionability should be strengthened to enable enhanced scrutiny of terms that fundamentally undermine contractual products. Its procedural prong should be satisfied by the adhesive nature of the terms, without additional proof of the circumstances of a consumer\u27s surprise about the contents of the contract. The substantive prong should be informed by implied obligations of good faith and the implication that this contract-as-product is fit for ordinary and particular purposes- that it is faithful to the underlying transaction. Attempts by lenders to disclaim implied warranties or obligations of good faith should be viewed as prima facie unconscionable. In this way, the law governing consumer-contracts-as-products would serve the same function as the product liability and warranty laws that govern consumer-goods-as-products. Reconciliation of these laws would ensure that financial contracts are fit for their ordinary purposes as loans